Bullying Archives – Varsity Branding

Tag: Bullying

I’m Stuart Jackson. executive vice president at Greystone. We are a development and operations consultant in all areas of senior living. We work with Life Plan Communities in over 40 states, and have consulted with well over 500 providers in our corporate history. We are often asked to come in and bring strategic thinking to help organizations grow, adapt and change.

Recently, Brad Straub, executive vice president at Greystone, and I presented “A Bird’s Eye View in Growth and Redevelopment” at the Greystone Sales Adventure event in Dallas. In this post, I’ll touch on some of the highlights, including trends within the space and how your peers are adapting their businesses to them.

An Overview of Our Current Environment

Our current environment has a lot of pressures and uncertainties. Inflation has had its impact. Labor has been difficult to come by. Interest rates are rising. Hopefully, we’re past COVID-19 to a degree, but that’s been painful and tough. Yet there are positive indicators, too, like demographic growth, economic improvement and a healthy real estate market  (depending on where you are). Cost of capital has historically been a positive indicator. Rates are rising, but availability is still relatively strong.

Demographics Remain Strong

I want to emphasize the positive indicators that make us excited for the future of senior living. There will be continued, sustained growth of the senior population over the next 20 years. The roughly 25 million 75+ year-olds in the U.S. will grow to roughly 45 million, remaining strong. By the mid-2020s, twice as many people will celebrate their 65th birthday than in the 1980s and ‘90s.

Households Age 75+ by Income

All of that is great, but you might ask, “Will this generation have the economic means to move into a retirement community in the future?” We looked at projections from 2016 as to how many households would meet income thresholds in 2021. When we compared them to the actual 2021 data, the number of seniors meeting those thresholds were actually 30% to 40% greater than projected. That tells us that when looking to the future, seniors will have more income and assets than they had before.

US Home Values Up 110% Since 2002

In some locations we’ve seen a decline in home prices. But we have to take a broader view. Seniors who have owned their homes for a long time have experienced significant run-ups in price. The value of homes post-COVID-19 has skyrocketed. That’s a positive indicator for entrance-fee-based communities, as seniors will have even more assets than anticipated.

Favorable Mortgage Rates

The bond market expects mortgage rates will average 5.6% in 2023. If you look at rates, they’ve risen sharply over the last nine months, but they are still at all-time lows. They’re projected to normalize in the 5% range. That’s great for a buyer looking to buy a senior’s home when they sell it.

Current Market Conditions

Sales and pricing conditions are slow or very slow in 64% of markets, down from 81% last month. 36% of markets are normal, which reflects 2–3-month sales per community with rising net prices. Homes are selling in around 60 days, which is pretty normal for this last decade.

What’s on Providers’ Minds Today?

Let’s shift to the current landscape and touch on the mindset of the customer. Even if people have a high-value home, that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re confident in selling their house and moving into senior living. They may be hearing about the economy and putting a pause on the decision-making process. So how do communities address planning for the future?

We’re seeing a range of methods to position communities for the future, including expansions of current campuses, new locations, satellite locations, acquisitions and affiliations. Let’s focus on a few.

Expansions

Expansions are a great way to incrementally innovate your campus, to better position yourself with current residents, and better serve future Boomer residents who may look to your community for aging well. We believe you should create projects in small phases that are both market- and financially supportable, in order for expansions to support themselves and generate benefits for your organization.

Independent living is the main focus. Creating larger accommodations has absolutely been a trend, because Boomers have more resources and are willing to pay for, or wait for, bigger accommodations. If you have one-bedrooms or studios, you may find those challenging to fill. If you have assisted living and/or memory care on campus, our view is to right-size those types of residences to benefit mostly your internal population, and have them fill those levels of living. Choice for the consumer is key. There is lots of focus on dining and amenity spaces, and how existing spaces can benefit new prospects. We’ve talked about pickleball more in the last six months than I think we ever have! That’s what we’re seeing a lot of, combined with great social spaces.

Canterbury Court is an example of a recent Greystone expansion. This Buckhead Atlanta community has a replacement healthcare building going in next to their existing towers. We’ve been helping them adjust by reducing their healthcare and adding more independent living.

Satellite Campuses

Another trend we’re seeing is the satellite campus. If you’re landlocked and have a difficult time adding more land to your campus, but you need more independent living to improve your offerings, the way to do so is with a satellite location. At Friendsview in Portland, we created an expansion of an existing satellite cottage community, about one-and-a-half miles from the main campus. This satellite community is also adjacent to the nearby college campus for lifelong learning opportunities. It’s already sold out and filled up.

Strategic Pricing

Another area we spend a lot of time digging into is strategic pricing analysis to really evaluate your market.

Nationally, the number of age-and-income-qualified seniors in the market has jumped 20% in the last two years. Your market can afford more. There is value in adjusting your entrance fees and monthly fees, and you can analyze your current pricing and compare it to the pricing of your competitors. Once you have that knowledge of your market, you can determine how to change your pricing and contract structures, and look at your healthcare benefit and refund options. This analysis can help your businesses with inflation and rising costs that are putting pressure on your operating margin.

One thing to do in any pricing analysis is prepare a penetration analysis. We actually test every unit, style and price point across monthly and entrance fees, to understand the market’s ability to afford those specific price points within your mix of units. That penetration rate shows either risk or opportunity in your marketplace.

I hope this analysis of the latest trends in senior living has been helpful to you. Today’s landscape has challenges, but there are many positive indicators that can help your community move forward to a successful future.

Life Plan Communities (sometimes known as CCRCs) have blossomed in popularity in recent decades. By providing a continuum of care that offers security and peace of mind, these organizations are appealing to a wider range of ages than ever before. Many of our partners are marketing to individuals in their early 60s while still caring for residents nearing their centenary celebration (and beyond). This trend creates a unique situation where people of very different ages and generations are residing in these communities.

Think about it for a second — people who are neighbors in your community may easily have an age difference of 20 to 30 years. Certainly, the cultural and generational differences between these individuals are going to play a role in how they interact with and perceive your campus. This isn’t likely to change, either. In the future, we could easily find ourselves working in communities that have Millennial, Gen X and Boomer residents all under one roof. Whenever you gather people with such diversity, conflicts will naturally occur. One of the issues that we’ve identified as a growing trend is resident-on-resident ageism.

Ageism seems to be a problem that starts subtly but can grow into a cancerous blight on the spirit of your community. It may first emerge as something that looks like convenience: Older residents dine earlier or use the pool at different times than younger residents. What begins as a solution to scheduling can deepen into a major divide. Soon, younger residents don’t want to go to dinner too early because they are avoiding dining with “those old people.” More than once, we’ve heard an able-bodied, young resident question a sales person as to why he or she allowed a frail, older resident to move in. Suddenly, your younger residents have become condescending to people older than them, not because of overt disrespect, but from living a separated life within the community.

Unfortunately, more often than not, we as marketers and community operators are responsible for some of these issues. When creating marketing materials, we eschew individuals who use mobility devices in favor of younger, more active residents. Why wouldn’t we? That’s the market we are trying to attract, right? Yet, we’ve heard from current residents of the alienation they feel when they see shiny new pamphlets that fail to accurately represent the community.

Once, we were on a photo shoot, taking pictures of model residents. A current resident approached us and dressed us down for lying to our consumers, saying that these “young” people were fake and not an accurate depiction of life in the community. Here, we find an older resident displaying negative behaviors toward someone she perceived as being younger and who didn’t represent her life or values.

Another great example can be found in resident “ambassador” programs. These initiatives are a great idea and often come from a desire to connect new residents with established community members who can help them transition into community life. Yet, when we are picking these ambassadors, what do we do? Of course, we pick the young, active members of the community. What message might this send, though?

Here in the Varsity office, we have several team members whose own families reside at retirement communities. One mother was serving as a resident ambassador for her community. She loved the position, and it gave her an outlet for energy; yet, within the last six months, she hasn’t been called upon as much to help out. When she inquired why, she learned that several other residents had expressed concerns that she was too old for the job and that her age wasn’t a good representation of the community. One can only imagine how dejected and unvalued she felt.

We all must realize that this kind of subtle discrimination and ageism happens in a myriad of ways in communities every day. Rarely does it come from a truly negative place; rather, it’s natural for mankind to create groupings that form out of mutual interests. Unfortunately, these groups also immediately create an “other” — people who are outside of the crowd and who don’t feel welcome.

Sadly, there’s no magic bullet to fix this kind of issue. As we’ve demonstrated, it can even be challenging to realize that resident-on-resident ageism is happening in the first place. We encourage you to take a look at your programs and policies and ensure that they aren’t endorsing subtle resident-on-resident ageism. What may be challenging changes now could prove to be a boon to your organization in the future.

“Did you notice that she didn’t come to lunch yesterday?”

“Have you heard who he’s sleeping with?”

“Oh, she’s a mess. She doesn’t comb her hair, and she always smells funny.”

Where do you think these quotes originate? Perhaps in a middle school cafeteria during lunch, or after a high school sports practice? Scarily enough, they could be happening right now, at any aging services community in the world. Bullying like this isn’t just a problem that afflicts young people. Increasingly, Boomers and seniors are becoming the victims of bullying by their peers.

A study released by Dr. Robin Bonifas of Arizona State University cites that 10 to 20 percent of residents of senior living communities have experienced some form of bullying. Take a moment to think about that number. This means that, between one in 10 to one in five residents have been bullied!

We can already hear you saying, “That doesn’t happen at my community! All of our residents are nice, lovely people who would never do that.” While we have every confidence that your community is a wonderful place to live, we also have to recognize that, when large groups of people live together in close surroundings, they are naturally going to come into conflict. For some, the way of handling these conflicts is to engage in negative behaviors that they may not even realize they are displaying.

While physical bullying is more common among younger groups, social and emotional bullying is the forte of older adults. Examples of bullying that fall into these categories are exclusion from social activities, the spreading of rumors and gossip, and negative personal speech. These behaviors can be further amplified by physical conditions, such as dementia and mental health issues. Where once someone was a loving and caring person, he or she might become negative and hurtful with the onset of dementia or after suffering from pain for a long period of time.

So, what can you do as an aging services professional to ensure that bullying doesn’t occur at your community? First, keep an open mind to the fact that it may be happening. Be mindful of residents’ behavior toward one other, and listen to what residents are saying about each other. Be certain to not agree with a resident’s negative actions or statements; rather, remind him or her that his or her behavior could be hurtful, and try to help the resident empathize with how the other person might feel.

A great resource for more information on this trend — and for ways to cope with bullying behavior — can be found at SeniorHomes.com, here: https://www.seniorhomes.com/p/bullying-in-senior-living-communities/

Whether we want to believe it or not, bullying is happening in our communities, and we must be cognizant of the impact that it has on resident life quality. Paying attention to the warning signs now can help to avoid bigger conflicts in the future.

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